Not getting a response when running API methods

Trying to develop my scripts and not getting responses. I am not sure if its my script is wrong or the url call is ignored. I have at times received 4500 and 4600 errors when I've tweaked some of my scripts call url perameters, so I am, pretty sure there is some communication happening.

https://crm.zoho.com/crm/private/xml/Users/getUsers?authtoken=myauthtokenhere&scope=crmapi&type=AllUsers

Using this in browsers address bar -- no problem. I get the expected data returned. From my script, I get no response.

Same for this:

https://crm.zoho.com/crm/private/xml/Contacts/insertRecords?authtoken=myauthtokenhere&scope=crmapi&newFormat=1&xmlData=<Contacts><row no="1"><FL val="First Name">Scott</FL><FL val="Last Name">James</FL><FL val="Email">test@test.com</FL><FL val="Department">CG</FL><FL val="Phone">999999999</FL><FL val="Fax">99999999</FL><FL val="Mobile">99989989</FL><FL val="Assistant">John</FL></row></Contacts>

So, I am trying to understand if I need to specify any http header info to act like a browser? Do I need to specify Content-Type, etc? Does XML in the insert need the

<?xml version="1.0"?>

Thanks,

Scott